Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is stepping down as CEO of the chipmaker he co-founded 33 years ago and built into a $4 trillion company that fueled the artificial intelligence boom, the company announced Thursday.
Colette Kress, CFO, has been appointed interim CEO.
“The board has full confidence in Colette and the management team, and we look forward to the company’s operations, customer engagements and product roadmap continuing without interruption,” board chairman Harvey Jones said in a statement announcing the news.
The company will begin searching for a permanent CEO to replace Huang and will consider internal and external candidates, according to the release.
Kress also made a statement in the release, but Huang was not quoted.
After a meteoric rise to fame thanks to Nvidia’s central role in AI, Huang’s dramatic fall was even more rapid, following a series of scathing revelations about his romantic ties to a woman believed by the US intelligence community to be a Chinese spy.
Huang, 63, apologized Sunday for being “unfaithful to my wife,” without providing details about his affair with businesswoman Alice Huang, who worked for a Chinese company and Nvidia client called Megaspeed. On Wednesday evening, The New York Times reported that Nvidia’s CEO also had a separate affair, this one with Kimberly Powell, vice president of healthcare at the chipmaker. Later in the afternoon, the Times and other media outlets reported that Nvidia’s board of directors had met to discuss the company’s future.
Jensen Huang has denied allegations that he compromised national security or Nvidia’s secrets after reports of the Alice Huang affair. The news sparked concerns that Nvidia knew that companies based in Singapore and Malaysia had evaded U.S. export controls to access its technology. The committee said Tuesday it had hired Wachtell Lipton to investigate the intelligence allegations.
Huang’s downfall also puts a spotlight on President Donald Trump, who formed a particularly close relationship with the CEO of what until recently was the world’s most valuable company. Huang became a key voice in U.S. AI policy while lobbying on issues that were in Nvidia’s interests, such as preserving access to open source AI and lobbying to allow chip exports to China.
In May, Huang joined Trump on a trip to China, and in August, while on stage at the All-In Summit to discuss AI safety and regulation, he took a call from Trump and put it on speakerphone.
“I’m with you all the way,” Trump told Huang and the audience.
With Democrats poised to take both houses of Congress and promising to investigate various matters related to Nvidia, Huang’s status in Washington, D.C. was poised to change dramatically even before the matters became public.
Nvidia’s fortunes soared after OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, leading to high demand for the chipmaker’s graphics processing units, or GPUs. Nvidia’s stock has risen 14-fold since then, despite a recent pullback related to the Huang scandal and the broader selloff in the AI business.
Beyond his impact on Nvidia, Huang’s departure has profound ramifications for the AI industry that has made Huang a spokesperson and global celebrity, traveling the world in his trademark leather jacket, touting the power of advanced chips, models and agents.
Huang has seeded the market with many companies buying Nvidia GPUs, growing his company’s influence and establishing a long list of customers, beyond hyperscalers. Nvidia has used its balance sheet to underwrite leases and chip sales, and has become the centerpiece of the industry, acting as a technology provider, customer, investor, financier and partner to many AI companies.
“He’s Mr. AI. He speaks for the industry,” said Jeff Christian, CEO of Christian and Timbers, an executive search firm. “It is financially connected to everyone, either through partnerships or by lending money to buy tokens.”
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